MALE celebrities get more Twitter abuse than women, but men are also more likely to give abuse, a study shows.

A two-week study of 2,006,616 tweets which were sent to some high-profile and widely-followed public figures on the social media website showed that 5.19 per cent of those sent to male celebrities included abuse, compared to 1.37 per cent aimed at female celebrities.

British think-tank, Demos, and academics from the University of Sussex developed software which looked at the accounts of celebrities, politicians, journalists and musicians, which were split equally between the number of male and female famous faces.

They ranged from journalist Piers Morgan through to singers Rita Ora and Jessie J plus former Cabinet minister Baroness Warsi.

Being outspoken meant that Morgan, comic Ricky Gervais and former Apprentice contestant Katie Hopkins were three of the most likely celebrities to receive abuse.

It was found 2.54 per cent of the tweets containing the @ username of male public figures contained abuse, compared to only 0.95 per cent of the tweets received by prominent women.

Of the 94,528 messages for Morgan, 8,258 were abusive while 1,190 of the 45,815 messages received by Ricky Gervais were abusive.

Jessie J had to put up with 263 abusive messages among the 322,433 she received.